Cell phone number bill (1 Viewer)

[Jay H]

I somehow recall hearing about a cell phone bill that allows you to keep a cell phone number if your cell phone becomes inactive for more than X amount of days.

I have a prepaid ATT free2go phone that I bought a long time ago just for 911 and very infrequently, vacations in which I will put some money in my account. Well, on a recent bike trip, I tried to put $25 in my account only to have problems entering my phone number in the automated account line. I was eventually told that if my phone is inactive for more than 45 days (my phone has probably been inactive for more than a year) that I can lose my number. Now this is no big deal as long as I can still call 911 from it, but seems annoying whenever I have to use it to have to keep dealing with customer service (which costs them a lot of money as I was on the phone with them for 1.5 hours last night and never got it resolved yet due to system problems on ATT's end). Wouldn't it be cheaper for them simply to assign me a number and leave it at that rather than have to waste their and my time calling them up everytime I want to put money in my account?

If there is this cell phone bill, is it going to be enacted anytime soon and would that affect me?

Jay

 

[Lee L]

I'm not sure of the exact status as far as implementation but Number Portability as it is called has been approved by the FCC and the cell phone companies IIRC. The largest carriers fought it for a long time and delayed it by over a year as they were afraid they would lose customers more easily to other carriers if there was no changing of numbers. I t would be interesting to read the rule to see if it even applies to pre-paid and since you did not change carriers it may very well not apply anyway.

 

[Andrej Dolenc]

That cell phone number portability is supposed to take effect Nov 24th, FYI.

Andrej

 

[Leila Dougan]

From everything I've read, the number portability act will not cover pre-paid service.

I'm sure it's still cheaper to rotate numbers between all their pre-paid phones than assign a permanent one to each other. Most people who buy pre-paid phones move on to contract service or drop the phone completely within short order, so it doesn't make sense to have a number assigned to a phone that will never get used again. Plus, I'm sure they figure that if you get annoyed enough you'll just get contract service instead.

 

[Jay H]

I'm actually not annoyed at all in having to get a new number, it's dealing with customer service which is usually a pain and that their phone system doesn't account for such a thing. It would tell you that your phone number you just entered is "invalid" try again later???!?!?!? Why would I try again later, would I hear something different?

It's bad enough they keep lowering the prepaid dates, one should be able to put in $50 in one's account that never expires, in essense, it's not really a prepaid phone service, it's an account with a 45-day term, rather than a month.

Jay

 

[Leila Dougan]

Jay, the "you get annoyed" bit was a general "you". I was trying to answer your question about it being cheaper to keep a number assigned to your phone, that's all. Calling and talking to AT&T is also, I imagine, built into the methods to further annoy "you" so that you go with a contract instead.

 

[Curt_Dennis]

Any cell phone, even those without any service can dial 911. That is required by law.